What’s with the squirrels?

For those who haven’t noticed in the past few weeks, there have been a lot of squirrels on campus. They hide in garbage cans, steal your lunch and jump carelessly out of trees. What could possibly be wrong with these crazy squirrels?

Union has a notorious history of being home to these strange, quirky squirrels that act in a manner different than other places. Rhea Howard ‘14 said, “In my three years at Union, I’ve seen two squirrels holding full Snickers bars in their mouths.”

These squirrels are not easily scared by humans like the squirrels most of us know. This could be due to the amount of trees and plants around campus, which gives them reason to believe that they own the place, especially in the early morning when many students are cautiously walking to class, hoping to avoid encounters with these pests.

A compounding factor in the crazy squirrel syndrome on this campus seems to be the amount of human food that the squirrels intake. They can constantly be seen with any type of food from Dutch, including pizza, hummus, or other food that we’ve hastily discarded outside of Reamer.

Sunny Anjum ‘13 recounted his friend being attacked by one of these not-so-friendly rodents. “My friend was trying to put the garbage out one night and one was taking residence in the garbage can. He didn’t know and the thing jumped out onto him! He screamed so loud I ran outside and it had thankfully run away. When things pop out at you like that it’s scary though!”

The squirrels are consistently living in the garbage cans, especially outside of Wold House after late night Wednesday Pizza.

We are lucky that we have all these great events on campus, but perhaps, as a campus, we should make an effort to stop feeding the squirrels.

Either eat your food, or dispose of it in a place where squirrels are not likely to attack.

For more information on the happenings and whereabouts of the nearest Union College squirrel, follow them on twitter @UC_Squirrel! Crazy squirrel, don’t you know that I love you?